by Garry Disher
“What time did you and Mrs. Armstrong go to Redruth the weekend your wife died?”
“In time for the footie. And I was with her until I got arrested. And I was in the lockup when Allie died, okay?”
Then Latimer’s face altered, a look almost of glee. “Where are you going with this? You looking at Finola?”
“She’s in the clear. But why are you pointing me at her? As far as you’re concerned, your wife committed suicide.”
“That’s what I think, yeah. If you’d lived here with Allie, it’s also what you’d think. But for some reason you’ve got it in for my father and me, probably influenced by that bitch across the road, so I’m indulging you, it amuses me.”
“Did you break your wife’s hand one day, Mr. Latimer? Bend her fingers back? Slam it in the car door?”
“Fucking get out.”
HIRSCH COULD HAVE GONE home to talk to the furniture, but he said, “Mr. Latimer, where’s the second twenty-two rifle?”
He pointed to the gun cabinet on the wall.
“What?”
“You have two such rifles: the one that killed your wife and one other.”
“How the hell do you know that? You checking on my licenses?”
“A Ruger and a Brno. Where’s the other one? In the ute? The shed?”
“Fucked if I know. Why?”
“Because your son is unraveling and might decide to shoot himself. Or you.”
That got Latimer going.
They didn’t find the rifle in the ute, the sheds, the car, cupboards, wardrobes, under beds. Leaving one room still unsearched.
Craig Latimer was curled up on his bed, a damp, blotchy, unlovely lump of a boy, his meaty spine turned to them. Latimer sat, placed a big hand on an unresponsive shoulder. “Son? Where’s the twenty-two we keep in the ute?”
Craig rolled onto his back. “I dunno.”
“You haven’t been taking potshots at tin cans?”
“Not me! Jack.”
Latimer gaped. “Jack?”
“Him and Katie Street.”
Hirsch stepped in. “Craig, where is your brother?”
“Staying with Allie’s parents.”
“Would he have taken the rifle with him?”
Craig scoffed. “Nanna wouldn’t let it in the house.”
“Perhaps your mum hid it.”
“Why would the bitch hide it?” Craig said.
After a moment, Hirsch said, “Did your father teach you to talk about her like that? Perhaps she hid it because it wasn’t being kept in a secure place.”
He left, stewing. But the thing was, none of the Latimers could have killed Alison. They hated her, though. Given an opportunity to sweeten the memory, they hadn’t taken it.
CHAPTER 29
ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON in late November, Hirsch washing the HiLux again, maintaining standards, feeling stiff from yesterday’s tennis, a new white Camry with Victorian plates entered town from the south. It slowed outside Tennant’s store, braking next to the petrol bowser. A young man got out, rattled the nozzle. Hirsch knew Tennant locked it overnight and on Sundays and public holidays. Then the driver peered through the shop window, into the shadowy, closed, unlit interior. A young woman joined him. They pantomimed dejection, but that didn’t last: Now they were looking around for a way out of their dilemma. And there was Hirsch a short distance away, a hose in his hand, the POLICE sign above his door. They climbed back into the Camry.
A moment later they were parked at the curb and stepping onto his lawn. Hirsch released the spray-gun trigger, dropped the hose, wiped his palms on his jeans and thought backpackers. The clue was in the backpacks like a pair of passengers on the backseat. Northern European? Tall, blond, lithe, sun-browned, clear-eyed, quizzical, fearless—on just about every count they were not locals.
“We are not having benzene,” the boy said, his teeth white and straight. Board shorts, faded T-shirt, craft market sandals.
“Petrol,” Hirsch said.
The girl said, “This is so. Pet-rol.”
She was as tall as her boyfriend, vital, athletic, with cropped hair, tight shorts and a singlet top. Hirsch fell in love on the spot, looks and vitality and accent.
“The shop’s closed, I’m afraid.”
“We must be in Port Augusta for the famous Ghan and Pichi Richi trains,” the girl said, mangling the words charmingly.
Hirsch had a mental stab at their movements. A few weeks or months traveling around and across the continent, hitchhiking, taking buses and trains, camping, staying in hostels and cheap motels, some fruit picking and bartending and waitressing along the way. Hiring a car occasionally, like this Hertz Camry. The Ghan ran from Adelaide, with a stop at Port Augusta, on its 3,000 km journey to the Timor Sea, but it seemed they first wanted to ride the Pichi Richi train, a rickety little rattler that traveled a short distance near Port Augusta, where he supposed there was a Hertz agency where they could return the car.
“Please can you help us? The next town is too far for us and the last town is too far also. We are not having the petrol for these journeys.”
Hirsch thought this was something they didn’t prepare you for when they posted you at a one-man police station in the bush. He made a mental note to stock some emergency fuel, one jerry can of unleaded, one of diesel. A man of the people.
Bob Muir.
“I can take you to someone who might have some petrol.”
“Dank.”
Dutch? He squeezed in with the backpacks—grimy, faded, unraveling—and directed them to the street where the Muirs and the Donovans lived.
Yvonne Muir answered. Eyeing the Camry and its occupants, quivering to know, she said, “Bob’s next door, setting up Leanne’s new TV.”
Hirsch paused at the Camry to explain where he was going, and walked across the grass to the Donovans’. Leanne opened the door, looking red-eyed, uncombed, a little awry in battered Crocs, tracksuit pants and T-shirt. She blinked at Hirsch, said, “Sorry, haven’t had a shower yet,” and led Hirsch through to her sitting room, where she collapsed into an armchair. A mug of tea steamed on a stool beside it, a cigarette burned in a saucer.
“Bob,” Hirsch said, nodding at Muir, who was kneeling on the floor beside a wall opposite Leanne’s armchair, a screwdriver sticking out of the rear pocket of his overalls.
Muir nodded, said “G’day,” and returned to his task. He’d run coaxial cable along the skirting board to a large flat-screen television, which had replaced the boxy set Hirsch recalled from his first visit. The old TV sat with its face to the wall with a coil of old ribbon cable, disgraced, forgotten, ready for recycling. Ready for the rubbish tip, anyway.
The air was dense: Both Muir and Leanne had cigarettes going. Hirsch wanted to cough, wave the smoke away, open a window. “Need to ask a favor.”
Muir, still on his knees, produced a Swiss Army knife, took up the cable end. He peeled back a couple of centimeters of black outer casing, revealing the inner sheath, core and copper wire. He hadn’t a hurry in the world.
“Shoot,” he said.
Hirsch told him about the backpackers.
Muir grunted. “Wouldn’t be the first time. The last bloke always had a couple of drums on hand, one unleaded, one diesel.”
“I’ll remember that,” Hirsch said.
“Go down the side of my place to the shed and you’ll find a ten-liter jerry can. There’s a forty-four gallon drum of unleaded against the back wall. How about I let them have twenty liters? Fifty bucks should cover it, get them a fair distance.”
“Thanks, Bob.”
Hirsch stepped over to the TV. “You won’t know yourself with this, Leanne.”
She smiled, tired, sad, thankful for small mercies. “Present from Sam.”
“Nathan’s mate?” said Hirsch, running his hand over the smooth flank. “Generous of him.”
“He won it at the pub, but doesn’t need it.”
“Wish someone would give me a new TV,” Hirsch said, pe
ering into the gap between the rear panel and the wall. “All I’ve got is a little portable, lucky to get one channel, depending on the weather.”
There was nothing to say to that. Muir was fastening a connector to the cable end, ready for the antenna socket. Leanne continued to watch him. Hirsch left them to it.
WHEN THE BACKPACKERS WERE gone and Bob had his fifty dollars—“Do I get a commission?” “How about a second channel on your TV?” “Done.”—Hirsch opened up the office and hunted through the burglary reports, going back one year. Then he walked across to the Tiverton Hotel: Like the Muncowie pub on the outside but more appealing within. Dining room, main bar, side lounge, dartboard, snooker table, widescreen TV and no old-timers nursing beer.
And no raffle, not recently. Last Christmas, maybe? A ham.
Hirsch phoned a few other pubs in the area. Muncowie, Redruth. No raffles offering a TV set.
IT OCCURRED TO HIRSCH that he didn’t know where Nathan’s mate lived, and asking around would only alert him. But he did know where Sam Hempel and Nathan Donovan worked.
At eight on Monday morning he walked across town to Tiverton Grains, a collection of storage and processing sheds around a huge untidy yard, the admin area a cottage on a side street. Wracked with sneezes, he entered the main shed, a vast echo chamber, almost empty but for a few pallets, jute bags and nameless items of equipment. Thick air, thick with grain dust. Seeing no one, hearing a truck motor and voices in the backyard, he continued through to a metal door in the back wall, stepping from dimness and scratchy air to drenching sunlight. The yard was a depressed expanse of fuel drums, rusted machinery, dead weeds and a broad patch of oily dirt that served as employee parking. Four cars this morning, including Hempel’s lowered Commodore.
Hirsch headed across to an open tin structure against the back fence, a service bay. Inside it, nose out, was a grain truck, two overalls peering into the engine compartment, one of them saying, “Give her another go.”
The motor ground over, didn’t fire. With the hood up, Hirsch couldn’t see who was behind the steering wheel, but he said, “Morning, gents,” as he approached.
Sam Hempel and an older man straightened, turned. “Help you?” the older man said.
Hirsch drew nearer incautiously, and when he said, “I’d like a quick word with Sam,” was punched in the stomach, Hempel waving his hand immediately, saying, “Ow, fuck,” and running.
“Jesus, mate, sorry, don’t know what got into him,” the older man said, touching Hirsch as if he might get bitten, not sure what to do.
Hirsch, sucker punched twice in as many months, was too sore to run. Building up to a tormented shuffle, stomach muscles pulling, he followed the kid past the abandoned machinery and drums to the four employee cars. Hempel had vanished. Hirsch prowled between the vehicles, looking behind, under and into them, itching to look into the boot of the lowered Holden.
A whisper of cardboard or plywood against fabric, a soft booming sound, a sense of items shifting, compressing.
The rubbish skip.
Hirsch banged his fist against the metal flank. “Sam? Come on out of there.”
After a while, “Leave me alone.”
“Not going to happen, and you know it.”
Hirsch waited. The morning was warm and still, the sun edging above the gums that marked the boundary between the town and the first wheat paddock. A vapor trail disintegrated as he watched it. Adelaide to Perth? Adelaide to Alice Springs or Darwin? He thought of the Dutch backpackers aboard the Ghan. Meanwhile Tiverton was silent, only a murmur in the background and Hempel trying not to disturb the rubbish.
“Sam? I promise I won’t give you up to Sergeant Kropp and his boys, okay? But if I have to call them in, it will be taken out of my hands and I can’t protect you, understood?”
He could hear the boy thinking.
“I know you’re frightened. If you had your time over again, you wouldn’t punch me. Assaulting a police officer is pretty serious, you know. Hell to pay. Maybe we can work something out.”
“You promise you’ll keep them Redruth jacks off me?”
“Yes.”
“Particularly Nicholson?”
“Yes.”
Still Sam weighed his options. Hirsch said, “That was a lovely gesture of yours, giving Leanne Donovan a TV set. She hasn’t had a good trot, and it counts for a lot in my book that you did a nice thing for her.”
Silence.
“Even though the set was stolen, it was still a kindness to a woman who needed it.”
“She’s good to me. And I felt bad for her because of Melia and that.”
So bad that you went on a housebreaking spree on the day she put her daughter in the ground, Hirsch thought.
“I understand,” he said. “But we do have to talk.”
The load shifted, the metal skin boomed faintly and Hempel hoisted himself onto the rim of the dumpster, wild-eyed, oil on his jeans, hands and forearms. He was sweating, jittery and gave the yard the once-over.
“It’s okay, there’s only me here,” Hirsch said.
Hempel jumped to the ground. His jeans slithered to his thighs. He tugged them up. “Where we going?”
“To the station for the time being.”
“Not down Redruth?”
“No.”
“I didn’t mean to hit ya.”
“I understand.”
They were moving toward Hempel’s car now, Hirsch shepherding and ready to grab, bolster, protect or brain the kid. “Keys?”
He lifted the boot lid. Two Blu-ray players, a Game Boy, a laptop, a media dock, a Samsung Galaxy phone still in its box. All on the list. Hirsch slammed the lid, said, “Get in,” and drove out of the yard.
Down they went to the main road, passing the general store, into Hirsch’s place of business, where Sam said, “If I tell yous who run Melia over, can I go?”
CHAPTER 30
HIRSCH WASN’T MAKING ANY promises. “First things first, Sam. Tell me about the burglaries.”
They were in his sitting room, the front door locked to deter callers. He switched on the digital recorder, stating names, date and location.
Hempel, a forlorn shape in one of the armchairs, looked on in dismay. “Don’t I need a lawyer?”
Hirsch got comfortable. “You’ve every right to one. But Sam, once a lawyer’s involved I’ll formally charge you. I will throw the book at you: Assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, several counts of burglary, and I’m sure I can think of more charges. Then I will inform the homicide squad that you are a witness and maybe a suspect in the death of Melia Donovan. They don’t mess around, those guys. They’ll whisk you away and grill you for days and you won’t see daylight for twenty years.”
He paused. “That’s if we go the formal route. You will still face charges, but I’d like to protect you from the worst of it, at this stage.”
Hempel gnawed at his lower lip.
“So,” Hirsch said, “the break-ins.”
“It was me. I done them.”
“But you were at the service in the church, with Nathan and his mother. I saw you.”
Sam shifted, partly in agreement and partly in embarrassment. “I was like, you know …”
“Checking out who else was there.”
“Yeah.”
“You knew these people would be absent from their homes for a couple of hours.”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t Nathan or his mother wonder where you’d gone?”
“Said I had stuff to do.”
“Where do you live at present?”
“At Nate’s.”
“And before that?”
“With me mum sometimes, with me mates, mattress on the floor and that.”
Hirsch checked the recorder. Satisfied, he said, “I’ve been looking at burglary and theft reports for the past twelve months. There have been several similar break-ins: Farm properties over Easter, during the school holidays, Saturdays when people are playing sport.
Was that you?”
Sam looked hunted. “Thought you wanted to know about Melia?”
“Was that you acting alone, or did you have help?”
“I didn’t kill her!”
“The burglaries, Sam: Was that you acting alone or did you have help?”
“Me.”
“Was Nathan ever involved?”
“Nate? No way. The cops are always hassling him.”
“Making it difficult for you to operate.”
“What?”
“Nothing. You stole quite a lot of gear in the past few months. The stuff in your car is the tip of the iceberg. Where’s the rest?”
“Sold it.”
“Bloke in a pub.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll need a name.”
“Dunno if I could find him again.”
Hirsch couldn’t count how many times he’d had this conversation. “What did he look like, this bloke in a pub? Which pub?”
“Can’t remember. Somewhere down Adelaide.”
“You drive all the way to Adelaide to do your drinking? Don’t answer that. Tell me why you gave Mrs. Donovan one of the stolen TVs.”
“Like I told you, I felt sorry for her and that.”
“Sorry how?”
“Sorry Melia got killed. A tragedy.”
Hirsch gave him a look. “A tragedy. You’re close to the family?”
“Yeah. Me own family’s fucked.”
“How do you know the Donovans?”
“Ever since I was in primary school with Nate. His mum let me doss down at their place when my mum was drinking or had a bloke over to stay.”
“That’s been a pattern for a while?”
“Years.”
“So you’d known Melia since she was a baby?”
“She was kinda like my sister.”
Sam had curled into the armchair. Fear, nerves and shame had shrunken him, it seemed to Hirsch. The kid’s clumsy height and bulk counted for nothing. Here out of the light he was pale, very gingery, the hairs downy, no spring or verve at all.
“She was special to you?”
Sam shrugged.
“I’ve seen photos of her. A lovely girl. Beautiful, in fact.”